Chapter Thirty-Five: Crack, Crack, Crack
Azula makes it to the halls leading to the throne room with Zuko. Her skin shines with sweat as they walk inside of the main entryway. Something tells her that father has Kazumi, and that is ultimately distressing.
"He's waiting for us," Zuko says as Azula swallows and wonders which way they should go. If he hid or if he planned to kill them. "He's waiting for us, Azula."
"All the better." And she takes off running, killing every guard in her path. Each hall glows blue as Azula channels her anger into her blows.
Zuko walks beside her, picking off any guards she leaves. They work together, red and blue fire mixing as they hurry towards the throne room.
He is waiting for them, standing, pacing. Azula half thought he would hide, but he simply locked the doors and waited. And then she sees exactly what is stopping she and Zuko from ripping him limb from limb with a whirlwind of red and blue. He's holding a small baby.
Zuko reaches out and grabs his sister to keep her from running directly at him and causing harm to the delicate situation. The anger glows in her eyes with more fervor than her flames.
"I knew you two would be at the head of this," Ozai says, shrugging. He glances down at Kazumi, and then up at his older children. "This is, I admit, much more interesting than my fight with the Avatar. I hope it turns out just as well."
Zuko lunges forward and Azula grabs him this time. They cannot strike too soon. But it is more emotionally charged than it should be.
"Zuko, do you want to hear about how he died?" Ozai asks as Azula holds her brother by the arm, digging her fingernails into him. If he attacks, they are both screwed. "Of course you do."
Ozai watches his children and their tense breathing as they watch, waiting for him to move. Azula has her eyes fixated on Kazumi, and Ozai thinks he has a chance of winning with this little advantage. And Zuko seems slightly unnerved when he hears about Aang.
"How?" Zuko asks and Azula tries not to cringe. Feeding into their father's plans is not going to go well for them.
"It was... sad, almost. Just pathetic," Ozai says with a small laugh. Zuko clenches his fist and Azula digs her fingernails deeper into his skin. She cannot let Zuko ruin this for her. "But I don't blame him. He wasn't ready. You two, hm, you two are ready, of course? His charred corpse fell into the water and disappeared. Just... sunk beneath the surface."
Zuko lunges forward and Azula seizes him before her daughter winds up in a crossfire. Even if she dies in this fight, she wants to ensure that Kazumi survives. And Zuko does not have the best aim.
"Don't talk about Aang," Zuko snarls and Ozai smirks.
"Alright, well, the Avatar didn't want to die, but do you still want to die, Azula?" Ozai asks and she hesitates. She can remember looking into his eyes as he held her and contemplated killing her. "Think about it. All you've lost. It would be a release, wouldn't it? Your friends tortured because of you, the people who were killed because you chose your girlfriend over their lives, all those Water Tribe friends of yours who died in raids looking for you, your friends who joined you in this suicide mission invasion... Can you live with that?"
"It's war. People die," Azula snarls, although her heart is in her throat. She does not want to think about how many people died because of her.
Pause. "I've hurt you haven't I?" Ozai says slowly, and Azula recognizes the words instantly. "I mean, you've hurt me and the nation we swore to protect with your little revolution. You look angry, hm? Maybe I should rethink our relationship."
Azula's fingers smoke and she tries to control herself. As long as he has Kazumi, she cannot rush into an attack.
"I don't want to do this. We don't have to do this," Ozai asks slowly and Azula clenches her jaw. The Fire Lord shifts his technique, dissatisfied with the effect of Aang's death on them.
Azula slowly shakes her head. "Yes, yes we do. You made the choice to do this a long time ago. Stop wasting our time and give me my daughter. You can't use her as a shield."
"If you want her, come take her. You can claim her now and return to being my daughter. It's never too late," Ozai says earnestly and Azula is surprised. She would imagine he would want her dead by now, and not be bothering to bargain.
Maybe he loves her. No, no, that is a dangerous thought. Azula cannot let his kindness get to her and break down her walls of anger, rage and desire for vengeance. She has roared, she has rampaged, and now she needs her bloody vengeance.
Azula walks to Kazumi and holds her in her arms. She swallows the lump in her throat and does not look at her child. Ozai touches her arm and she takes two steps back. He allows the situation to progress, unsure what move Azula will make next.
But Azula passes Kazumi to Zuko and murmurs, "Run. Find Katara. Go."
Before anyone can react, Zuko knits his eyebrows together, takes a deep breath, and complies. He presses Kazumi tightly to him to protect her from any fire or blade, and runs. Leaving Azula is hard; it is one of the hardest things he has ever done. But he knows she needs to face Ozai, and he knows he needs to find Katara.
Azula locks eyes with her father. "You shouldn't have hid behind her."
"I'll have her back by the end of the afternoon. You want an Agni Kai? For the throne?" He looks entertained as his city is crumbling.
"Do you remember what I told you before you banished me? I said I would come back one day. I said I would take what was mine with blood and fire. I said I would kill you. And, father, I am a woman of my word," Azula says coldly, her heart pounding but her tone and posture confident. She will destroy him today if it is the last thing she does.
"I asked that you arrive here unscathed. You must have noticed," Ozai says and Azula takes a deep breath.
"Don't act as if that was out of love for me, father. You wanted me whole and healthy so you could beat me without that little shadow of a doubt that you weren't good enough," Azula purrs and he is unnerved by her confidence and simmering anger. Even in her rage and madness she was bendable to him and him alone. Now she seems fierce. Vindictive. Everything he cultured in her that he hoped would never turn against him.
Azula can feel the desire in her bones. The need to destroy him at all costs. They are silent for a moment, as if wondering if there is anything more to say. But there is not. His stalling is useless now that he does not have a human shield.
And so Ozai looks her up and down. "Why are we wasting time talking? You came here to fight me. So let's fight."
Azula swallows and takes a step backwards, steadying her stance. Her heart races as time feels as if it slows down, and her eyes fixated on her opponent. She has waited for this moment for so long she can barely remember what it was like to love her father.
He steps into a fighting stance as well.
One, two, three... "Begin," Ozai says sharply, as if this is a casual Agni Kai and not the climax of Azula's life, and the end of his life.
Behind the barricades, Mai and Ty Lee have hacked and slashed and punched their way up the streets. The air is so permeated with smoke that they feel as if they are suffocating as they try to catch their breath.
They stop and slump against a crumbled wall, looking around at their home. It lies in ruins now, and the rebuilding will be... arduous. Ty Lee glances at Mai, her lips parted and bloody.
Someone skitters in front of them and they jump up to continue fighting, but it is Toph, Sokka and Suki.
"Did they already get to the palace?" Suki demands, taking charge as Sokka is leaned over panting, supporting himself with his bloody sword.
Toph tunes herself in further to know if another swarm of soldiers comes at them.
"I don't know. We're looking for them," Mai finally says. "How were we supposed to be ready for this...?"
"We couldn't have known," Suki says, and it is the warmest tone she has ever used with Mai. "How were we supposed to know that the entire military would be here and they would have fortified barricades and explosives?"
"But we can get back together like we planned. Take him as a group and he can't beat her-us us," Ty Lee says, wiping blood and sweat from her lip. "There's still time. Right? Right?"
Mai can see the others giving her the same look Mai got when she insisted that Zuko was alive.
"Azula is fine," Mai says softly, but Ty Lee does not listen.
Meanwhile, Katara makes it to the royal palace, the power surging through her. Her bending is strong, and she can no longer remember what it felt like when she lost it. She slashes with ice and knocks back soldiers with water as she pushes into the palace and runs, looking for Zuko and Azula. She can still join them, and that's better than nothing, even if Mai, Ty Lee, Toph, Sokka and Suki didn't make it.
She spins down the hall and slips on her own water before catching herself. And then she is suddenly locked in combat with more guards than she can count.
Great. This is going even worse than The Day of Black Sun.
Azula and Ozai are frozen in a time capsule outside and away from the Invasion that Azula's friends are caught in. They circle around either other, neither of them making a strike yet.
And then Ozai makes the first move. Azula blocks the attack before it blooms to full potential, and pushes off of him. She grabs the wall and throws herself forward, her hands releasing streams of cerulean fire that light the room. Ozai is unscathed, and he turns to face her, blocking another two attacks from his daughter.
She moves through the shadows, dancing around his flames. He taught her well. Too well.
Her hands lit, she throws balls of fire at Ozai. One singes his clothes and she feels a slight rush; maybe she can win this. She hopes she can win this.
The fight rages as they clash against each other. Red and blue colliding and the fire swirling out of control and lighting curtains, smashing things, burning wooden fixtures. The throne room is almost as destroyed as Caldera itself as Azula and Ozai fight.
They are still equally matched, and neither of them has made much progress. But neither of them is tired yet either.
Azula tries to approach Ozai and use the technique Ty Lee taught her, but it was a stupid move. He grabs her arm and flips her through the air, knocking the winds out of her.
Ozai tears the crown from Azula's hair and she screams in pain. He pushes her back with the heel of his hand and she barely catches herself. He tosses the stolen crown away and it skitters across the hot stone floor.
Azula gasps for breath and tries to focus on the fight.
She finally manages to regain control of her breathing as she blocks his much more vicious and violent attacks. Azula summons lightning as she steps out of the way of a roaring whip of fire. With a crack, it lights the throne room, blinding them both for a moment.
It didn't... Azula did not land a hit. She breathes in sharply and runs to the throne, leaping up to get to higher ground. Blocking his attacks, he is now at last on the defensive instead of the offensive.
Ozai throws a wall of fire that Azula blocks with her hands, but she slips across the throne and falls forward. She catches herself and kicks up her ankle, throwing cerulean flame her father's way to keep him from taking advantage of her falling.
She got overly excited. Or something. She needs to keep her mind calm as Jeong Jeong kept telling her. Azula has trained for this. She has waited breathlessly for this moment.
Azula and Ozai rage against each other again. It is unclear how long the fight has been, but it feels like an eternity, and they are both soaked in sweat and losing focus.
There is a break in the fight. Azula looms over Ozai but he has her leg in his hand. They are at a brief impasse; one move from either of them means certain death from the other. Just breathing, breathing heavily and wondering how to strike.
Azula looks at the crown that was torn from her hair beside her foot. If she could get it...
Ozai kicks a flame towards her face and she rolls out of the way, her leg making a sickening popping sound, seizing the crown with one hand and plunging it into his shoulder as her leg bounces off of the floor with a searing pain. She limps backwards, both of her hands lit as Ozai yanks the crown from his bleeding flesh, gritting his teeth from the pain.
He looks distracted for a moment and she takes advantage of his hesitancy.
She summons lightning again and he narrowly dodges, but this time, he touches two fingers together and the room is bright with electricity once more. Azula pauses, her heart thumping, and as the lightning comes at her, she catches it with her hand and throws it back.
His eyes flicker wide, throwing him off. The calm focus of Fire Lord Ozai that has been giving him an advantage in the fight is now gone, and the lightning hits him in the same place it struck before, during their Agni Kai after Azula gave birth to Kazumi.
Azula runs forward as her father is in agony from the lightning strike. She likes the idea that it is a trick Zuko taught her that ended the fight. It feels almost as if he is beside her taking on their father.
And now, in the same line of thought, she and Ty Lee's love will conquer him as they conquer all. She balls up her fist and hits him around the heart, hoping she has collided with the right places to ensure his death.
Ozai tries to force himself up, tries to push Azula away. But she lunges for his throat as the pressure points have not set in yet. Or perhaps... perhaps Azual did not do it properly. There is a breathless moment where he punches fire at her and she thinks she hit the wrong pressure points, but then he sinks into his knees, the same look in his eyes as Admiral Maboro.
Azula laughs. She can only laugh. It is over. He is dead and it is over and Azula has never felt so alive.
"What did you do?" Ozai growls, feeling his lungs weaken slowly. He cannot describe the sensation, but he knows that it is not good. And it fills him with the bile of rage.
"You're dying. And, father, because I love you so dearly, I'm going to help speed it up," Azula says fiercely, feeling strong for the first time in a long time. The words resonate through her body as she realizes she now has the power to end him and be free.
Azula is on top of her father now. He is bleeding, he is burned, he is hit by lightning and he can barely breathe as his internal organs are shutting down. She stands there in front of him for a moment, feeling her own body close to snapping from the vicious fight.
"I wanted to tell you something," Azula breathes, a drop of blood from her lips falling on his cheek. She kneels in front of him, still holding on. He is beyond defeated, even if Azula's body sears with pain as she moves.
She swallows and sets her hand on his thigh for a moment, "Rulers reign; they reign and then they die. That's the natural order of things."
Pause. Silence. Too silent.
"If I burn," Ozai says as Azula rests her hands on his neck, "you burn with me."
She does not understand, save for the reference to her speeches in the Earth Kingdom, until she feels the sharp metal of her discarded crown piercing her stomach. Azula feels it go in deep, small pieces breaking off within her body and cutting her insides. She screams, but she forces herself onto his lap and clamps her hands onto his neck. Her breathing is labored and the pain is agonizing. She is going to die. She is going to die with him and she does not care.
He tries to strike then, at that moment but Azula blocks the flame and does not let go. And then Ozai finds himself incapable of bending. The pressure point trick his daughter pulled on him is starting to work.
Azula does not let go. Until she hears his neck bones crack and he stops trying to force her off of him.
Crack, crack, crack.
Azula slides down, off of his lap, checking for a pulse. Dead. He is dead.
She lies down beside him, looking at the pool of blood around her. Crimson and bright, dotted with glass.
Azula can feel the city shaking, feel it burning around her for the first time. Her visions are in her mind of blood and fire, of the invasion she longed for since her father banished her. She coughs up blood and wipes it off of her face, leaving streaks of pink on her pale skin.
The ground shakes again, and Azula knows she has won.
She chokes and gasps for a moment before she closes her eyes and lets go. Tears roll down her cheeks and she can taste salt and metal. But it does not matter to her.
She did it. She is free.
A/N: This is not the end. There's still a full chapter of things to happen. Next chapter is the last chapter, though.